Nancy Garrido and her husband Phillip, in orange, with their lawyers at a sentencing hearing (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, pool)

A serial sex offender has been ordered to spend the rest of his life in prison after the woman he kidnapped, raped and held captive for 18 years said he and his wife had stolen her life.

Jaycee Dugard was just 11 when she was abducted by Phillip and Nancy Garrido as her stepfather watched her walk towards a school bus near the family home in California in 1991. She gave birth to two daughters fathered by Garrido while held in a secret compound.

During sentencing the defendants, both dressed in orange jumpsuits, made no eye contact with anyone in the courtroom and kept their heads down as Ms Dugard's mother, Terry Probyn, read her daughter's victim impact statement. Ms Dugard did not attend the hearing.

"I chose not to be here because I refuse to waste another second of my life in your presence," she wrote in a portion of the statement directed to Phillip Garrido. "Everything you ever did to me was wrong and I hope one day you will see that.

"I hated every second of every day for 18 years," she said in her first public statement. "You stole my life and that of my family."

A judge imposed the maximum possible sentence of 431 years to life on 60-year-old Phillip Garrido, calling his treatment of Ms Dugard evil and reprehensible.

Garrido pleaded guilty to kidnapping and 13 sexual assault charges, including six counts of rape and seven counts of committing lewd acts captured on video.

His plea was part of a deal with prosecutors that saw Nancy Garrido sentenced to 36 years to life after pleading guilty to kidnapping and rape.

The deal was designed, in part, to spare Ms Dugard and her children from having to testify at a trial.

In the statement, Ms Dugard called Garrido a liar and said what Nancy Garrido did to her was evil. She said she hoped both of them would have as many sleepless nights as she had. Ms Dugard also said she was now doing well, and told Garrido "you do not matter anymore".